I hope you've heard of the concept of 1000 true fans developed by Kevin Kelly.
Its basic premise says that people could make a living if they would get 1000 people pay them 100 dollars per year each for their products and services. That's 6 figure salary. 1000 true fans is not a million or not even 10000 people. This number is finite and doable. What does it mean for organists? It means you have to find 1000 people who would want to study with you, come to your organ recitals, buy your CD's and DVD's, buy your organ music, basically anything you provide. The best way to connect with such loyal fans today is still through email. No other channel of communication works just as well. People for the most part ignore social media because it's so crowded but they will read an email from someone whom they trust and who can provide value for them. So with your organ related blog you also have the power to start communicating with your fans, some of whom will become your strongest evangelists and friends. But for this to happen you have to set up a newsletter opt-in form on various places of your blog. I use Mailchimp to deliver email messages to my subscribers. I'm not saying it's the only service out there but it's works for me and it's free for up to 2000 subscribers. If you ever get that many, the service can easily pay for itself. Of course, people won't easily give you their most precious digital information, email address, especially if you're a stranger to them. So you have to give them a compelling reason to do so. Unless your blog works like a miracle for them, saying "Subscribe for blog updates" isn't enough. I recommend to give them a free gift in exchange for their email address. This could be a PDF report, like series of blog posts, your organ recital audio or video, or even an email mini course where you can teach them some valuable skill. Once you have created your gift and set up to deliver automatically to anyone who joins your email list, place the special code your newsletter system provides for you on strategic places of your blog - at the end of the ABOUT page, on the side bar, on the header, even as a pop-up when people first come to your site or decide to leave it. You can even have a special dedicated page, such as FREE GIFT for collecting the emails of your subscribers. It's called a Squeeze page. Place the links to your squeeze page on your social media profiles too. Then you'll have better chances of finding people who need your help. The biggest mistake organists who care about their future career make is that they don't have a regular blog. The second biggest mistake is that they don't have a way to reach their fans through email. I hope you're not one of them. Once you've set up a newsletter system on your blog, you'll be ready to take the next step towards empowering your organist career, which is actually writing your blog posts. Stay tuned. Let me know if you need help with anything or feel stuck.
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